The Bible and Inerrancy
If you have been in church for any amount of time, you have probably heard something mentioned about the inerrancy of Scripture. This idea of inerrancy basically means that the Bible is true in all that it affirms and contains no errors, and serves as a foundational doctrine for understanding biblical authority. We hold to this idea because God doesn’t lie or make mistakes. What you might not know is that there are different types of inerrancy.
When we talk about inerrancy, we say that God inspired Scripture, so what Scripture says is trustworthy. Since God inspired Scripture, the Bible is without error in what it affirms. The problem comes when people make some assumptions that can lead to misunderstandings in how biblical inerrancy is applied, so I would like to offer some clarifications and distinctions that help frame the doctrine accurately within its proper scope.
Inerrancy is speaking about the original writings
Most people holding to an inerrant view of Scripture say that the Bible is inerrant in the original manuscripts, which were the first versions of Scripture written by the biblical authors. We need to make this distinction because when you read our copies of Scripture today, we are reading copies that were produced by scribes and copyists over many centuries. These copies may contain minor variations or scribal errors. However, most of these differences are insignificant and consist of spelling errors or word order variations, and although there are many variations, they do not change the core meaning or doctrine of Scripture.
Inerrancy does not mean that everything is literal.
Biblical inerrancy doesn’t force us to take every sentence literally. If you read the Bible, you understand that it contains different genres of writing. When we read poetry like the Psalms, we recognize that there is figurative language, such as metaphors.
“The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my savior; my God is my rock, in whom I find protection. He is my shield, the power that saves me, and my place of safety” (Psalm 18:2, New Living Translation). When we read this verse, we understand that God is not a physical rock, a fortress, or a shield. David is using a metaphor here to help us understand the nature of God and the role He plays in our lives. Inerrancy says that the truthfulness applies to the intended meaning of the text within its specific literary form. Inerrancy is not a wooden literalism that ignores how authors use imagery, metaphors, and other literary devices to convey spiritual truths. Inerrancy holds that this text is true in the way the author intended.
Inerrancy does not mean that the Bible is a modern-day science textbook.
I don’t want to get too into the weeds here, but people use the Bible to answer scientific questions. This is a challenging topic, but I briefly want to touch on it. We see this a lot in the debate about the age of the Earth. Some Christians who believe in the idea of absolute inerrancy treat the Bible as though it is making definitive scientific claims about our physical world. They read Genesis chapters 1 and 2 as providing a precise chronology and the mechanism for creation. We see this by taking and adding up the various genealogies to calculate the Earth’s age to be around 6,000 or so years old. When we look at the Bible as teaching science, we can run into an issue that if science contradicts a plain reading of Scripture, then science must be wrong or incomplete. As I said, this is not something I want to get too deep into because there are people on both sides of creation who are wonderful, dedicated, and smart Christians who differ on the age of the earth, and that is okay. I bring this up because biblical inerrancy allows the Bible to describe natural phenomena using language that describes things as they appear to human observation, not necessarily by providing technical scientific explanations for things.
Inerrancy usually focuses on what the Bible asserts, not every detail someone says
When we are reading and studying Scripture, we must be aware of the context. For example, if the Bible records someone telling a lie, inerrancy doesn’t mean the lie is true simply because it is in the Bible. Inerrancy means that the Bible accurately reports that the person lied. Again, the distinction I am making here serves to ensure that biblical inerrancy applies to the truthfulness of the author’s assertions rather than the factual accuracy of every statement recorded within the text. These distinctions help us understand how different people approach the idea of inerrancy, leading to various interpretations of the doctrine itself.
When many of us think about inerrancy, we tend to think about it in terms of absolute inerrancy. Absolute inerrancy is the idea that the Bible is fully true. This would include all the details regarding matters that are both scientific and historical. The idea here is that the biblical writers did intend to give exact scientific and historical data. The issue with this view is that it can then lead to conflicts that arise when looking at the text, and force us to solve problems. An example of this tension can be found in 2 Chronicles 4:2. “Then he cast a great round basin, 15 feet across from rim to rim, called the Sea. It was 7½ feet deep and about 45 feet in circumference.” If you hold to absolute inerrancy, the math doesn’t hold up. Mathematically, if you have a diameter of 15 feet, the circumference would need to be about 47.1 feet, not 45 feet. We find the circumference by multiplying the diameter by pi, so 15×3.14=47.1. This suggests that the biblical author was using rounded and approximate measurements, not precise technical specifications. This example, although it seems minor in isolation, powerfully illustrates the interpretive challenges that can arise with absolute inerrancy.
I believe the Bible is God’s Word and is without error. Although I believe the Bible is inerrant, I find myself holding more to the definition of full inerrancy rather than absolute inerrancy. According to Millard Erickson, “Full inerrancy also holds that the Bible is completely true. While the Bible does not primarily aim to give scientific and historical data, such scientific and historical assertions as it does make are fully true.”1 What strikes me most about this definition is that when discussing scientific and historical references, “full inerrancy regards these references as phenomenal; that is, they are reported the way they appear to the human eye. They are not necessarily exact; rather, they are popular descriptions, often involving general references or approximations. Yet they are correct.”2 For me, this seems to be the most reasonable position to hold, knowing that religious, theological, and spiritual messages are entirely true while being able to account for the descriptions provided by the Biblical authors that would not necessarily line up with modern thinking on a scientific and historical basis. This also lines up with Walter Elwell’s definition of inerrancy, being that “when all the facts become known, they will demonstrate that the Bible in its original autographs and correctly interpreted is entirely true and never false in all it affirms, whether that relates to doctrine or ethics or to the social, physical, or life sciences.”3
Why does inerrancy matter?
You might be wondering why inerrancy matters. I don’t know if you were like me, but before I took my first systematic theology course, I did not realize there were different types of inerrancy. I thought the Bible was either inerrant or it was not. When I began to study the different types of inerrancy, it was eye-opening to me. One of the reasons why some people struggle in their study of Scripture is that they have difficulty with some of the historical and descriptive things in the Bible. When I began to think about how I view Scripture, I was floating between absolute and full inerrancy. There are more conceptions of what inerrancy entails, but what ultimately led me to full inerrancy over absolute inerrancy is that when the writers reported on things, they reported the way they appeared to them. That helps me to understand the vivid imagery in books such as Ezekiel and Revelation.
When we are talking about inerrancy, we need to make sure that what we believe does not diminish or weaken the Biblical message. I believe that if you begin to deeply examine what you believe about Scripture, you will find the exercise to be quite enlightening. We need to understand and know why we believe what we believe. It’s okay to have questions. That is how we learn. I believe that holding the Bible to be inerrant should be a foundational belief of the church and that it should matter to all Christians. While many people waver in their beliefs about different secondary aspects of Christianity, inerrancy should not be one of them. If we cannot believe the Bible to be inerrant, our whole belief system and worldview begin crumbling. I would challenge you to think about how you think about the reliability and inerrancy of Scripture.
Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 191.
Ibid.
Walter A. Elwell, ed. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 156.